


The Ballad of Georgie Collins

by Jwash



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Beating the Fae at their own game, Cheating, Gen, Other, Saucy themes and language, comeuppance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 15:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10337190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jwash/pseuds/Jwash
Summary: Maddie receives a troubling text from the Campus Health Centre. Her boyfriend is in a non-responsive state, but what could have caused it? Where was he last night? And who is the girl in Wellington boots?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Ballad of George Collins, first featured on elsewhereuniversity.tumblr.com. Thanks and praise to @charminglyantiquated for Elsewhere University

Maddie sat in the campus health centre waiting room, and watched the other girls in the room. Across from her sat a freshman with dark curls, desperately trying to avoid everyone’s eyes. Beside her was a tall girl with the tanned-blonde look of a Scandinavian sports program exchange student. Another girl had positioned herself near the door and kept her head down, occasionally flicking invisible lint from her black dress. Still another dressed in a thick knitwear sweater leafed through one of the glossy magazines on the table.

There could be any number of reasons why five girls might be sitting in the health centre waiting room at nine in the morning, Maddie told herself, and it would be unlikely that those reasons would be connected. She, idly scrolled through her phone while a terrible thought built in the back of her mind. She read and re-read the text from Elsewhere University Health Centre, telling her that her boyfriend was in a nonresponsive state, and hoped she was the only one in the room who had received the same text.

Disappointment is inherent in hope, a fact demonstrated moments later when a nurse walked into the waiting room and asked who was here to see Georgie Collins and all five girls stood up.

The girl in the thick knitwear held up her hands and walked out of the door without a word. The Scandinavian folded her arms and narrowed her eyes, while the girl with dark curls sat down, blushing furiously.

“Oh no,” said Maddie, demonstrating her staggering capacity for understatement, even as she felt rage and panic building in her chest.

The girl in the black dress rolled her eyes. “We all are. The four of us.”

The nurse nodded without a word, her face a professional blank slate.

“Could I take your names?”

“Sigun,” said the Scandinavian.

“Mortessa,” said the girl in the black dress.

“Maddie,” said Maddie.

“K-Killstreak69,” stammered the girl in curls.

The nurse had clearly worked here long enough not to question it. New names were a big thing on campus, and it wasn’t like the health centre could directly access their medical records. They took identity security seriously at Elsewhere U.

She showed them through to the room where Georgie Collins lay on a second-rate hospital trolley. He looked good in his rumpled shirt, right down to the slight lipstick stain on the collar. The heartbeat monitor sat nearby, unconnected and silent.

“So he died how he lived,” said Sigun, her tone bitter, her mouth a grim unsmiling line.

“He’s not dead,” Mortessa replied, holding a hand to Georgie’s face. “He’s still breathing.”

“What happened to him?” Maddie asked.

“He walked in here under his own power,” the nurse said, “but collapsed shortly afterwards. He had your numbers listed as emergency contacts.”

“Why would he have you as his emergency contacts?” said Maddie to the other girls. “I mean, I’m his girlfriend, so that makes sense, but why you?”

“You’re his girlfriend?” said Sigun, turning to Maddie and folding her arms, muscles bunching and flexing. “That’s interesting.”

“And you are?” Maddie asked, trying her best not to be intimidated (or worse, attracted).

“We were dating,” said Sigun, her lips twitching up at the corners. “Me and Georgie.”

Maddie felt a cold wash of anger, her fists bunching. She turned to Mortessa.

“And you?” Maddie said, before she realised Mortessa was going through Georgie’s pockets. “What do you think you’re doing!?”

“Sure, we fucked once, maybe twice?” she said, her hands empty as she withdrew them. “More importantly, I gave Georgie some advice, which he seems not to have followed. He’s lost my iron ring.”

Sigun snorted. “That iron crap? Please.”

“You’d do well to respect the rules as they stand,” said Mortessa, “regardless of what you may be used to. I have a bad feeling Georgie has got himself into a mess with The Neighbours.”

Maddie rounded on Killstreak69.

“Well?”

Killstreak (who was an easy head shorter than Maddie) shrank back.

“W-we met on tinder…”

Maddie groaned. “I cannot believe this! You all knew about each other?”

“I could guess there were others,” said Mortessa, who was busying herself waving a piece of amethyst over Georgie.

“I wouldn’t have cared if I had,” said Sigun.

“He never said anything…”

“Ugh! I cannot believe you all! I can’t believe… him!”

“Fuck him,” Sigun said, shrugging.

“What is his problem!? How could you? How could you!?”

“Why hasn’t be been referred to the district hospital?” asked Killstreak69.

The others stopped and turned.

“Just, if he’s nonresponsive, the health centre doesn’t have the resources to help him out of it, does it?”

“Top marks, frosh,” came a voice from the doorway.

A woman stood there, smiling with too-sharp teeth and too-thin lips, dressed in a dark bottle-green jacket, an old-fashioned looking blouse, and green Wellington boots that sloshed as she walked into the room like she had just filled them from a tap. A stink like river mud and low tide poured off her, and her hair dripped with water. Maddie heard a sharp intake of breath from Mortessa.

“Who are you then?” said Maddie, planting her hands on her hips.

“You can go now,” the girl said to the nurse, without so much as glancing at Maddie.

The nurse nodded and left without a word as the girl breezed into the room.

“I’m another one of Georgie’s acquaintances, I’m afraid,” she said, tossing her hair exactly like a shampoo ad as she walked past Maddie. “I’m just here to pick him up.”

Killstreak69 hugged her arms around her body and pressed herself against the wall as the green girl approached Georgie’s bed. Even Sigun stepped out of her way. Mortessa clutched her amethyst tight.

“The reason an ambulance hasn’t taken dear Georgie away he doesn’t need a hospital. The boy is perfectly well, he just needs to go home. With me.”

Maddie stepped between the green girl and the bed. “And what makes you think I’ll let you just walk off with my boyfriend? Even if he is a cheating scumbag.”

The girl hadn’t looked more than a few inches taller than Maddie, but up close she loomed over her. Her skin seemed tinged with green, highlighted along her perfect cheekbones and sparkling around her icy blue eyes.

“I’d have thought him being a cheating scumbag would encourage you to let me take him,” said the green girl, her breath cold as a lakebed. “But if you must know, we had an exchange, he and I, and I’m simply here for my payment.”

“Not you too!” she said, her voice coming out higher and more petulant than she expected.

Maddie’s cheeks flushed red as she heard Sigun chuckle. This looming, beautiful river-woman made her feel like a child.

“Nothing so sordid,” said the green girl. “I simply waited by the lake for him, and he took a kiss from me quite willingly. In return, I claim him wholly. He will be treated well under the Hill, just as soon as I drag him under the Lake to be with me forever, as he ought.”

Sigun’s giggling cut off abruptly, with the sound of two and two being put together.

“The Lake? The Hill?” she said, her eyes suddenly wide with fear. “Wait, wait… You’re Huldra, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but she also goes by Nixie,” said Mortessa, her head low and guarded.

“Or Glashtyn, or Rusalka, or even Arethusa. Names are important, don’t you agree?” she said, with a pointed look at Killstreak69, who blushed and bit her lip.

“You came from the Lake,” said Mortessa, frowning. “You could have walked here faster than any of us. Why wait until the four of us had met?”

“I thought it was important for you to possess all the facts,” said the Green girl. "Who of you would stick your neck out for your Georgie Collins now you know what he is?“

The other girls stepped back or conceded, but Maddie stood her ground.

“No,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “You can’t have him.”

The green girl’s smile spread. “How, precisely, do you intend to keep him from me?”

Maddie’s mind spun. What did she know about the Lords and Ladies? She tried to remember what her RA had told her, but Fresher’s Week seemed much longer ago than two years. Salt and iron were sure bets, but she’d left hers in her room. Silver in the eyes worked for engineering students but bugger all use to a Lit student like her. They don’t think like us, they don’t give gifts, everything is either an exchange or a game to them.

“Well…” Maddie said, “if he owes you for a kiss, imagine how much he owes me.”

The green girl frowned, folding her arms slowly, giving Maddie a good view of her long, green fingernails, curled like claws. Maddie hoped they were just painted.

“I mean, I’ve kissed him a whole bunch, right?” she said.

“So?” said the green girl. “One kiss is much like another. The kiss he took from me by the Lake was much like the one taken from me on the bank of the Stour by another George Collins long before. 1720 is much like 2017.”

“Yeah, but you never got further than first base, right?”

Maddie felt her cheeks redden as she realised what she’d said, and had to say now, but happily the green girl’s cheeks were tinting turquoise too.

“Well, me and Georgie have screwed,” Maddie said. And then, with a touch of pride, “We fucked on every surface in his house. Made a point to.”

The green girl paced as if trying to get around Maddie, but she stood firm.

“That’s got to count for more than just a peck on the lips, right?”

The green girl hissed. “So you’ve rutted with him. What of it?”

“He owes me for that. Owes me at least three I can name off the top of my head.”

“Owes you what?” spat the green girl.

Maddie grinned. “Whatever he got from it that I didn’t. Quid pro quo.”

Mortessa and Sigun both snorted, and the green girl bared her sharp teeth.

“She’s right,” Mortessa said. “He owes me at least as much as her then.“

“And me,” Sigun said, grinning.

“Me too,” Killstreak69 said, stepping up beside Maddie.

“And I’ll beg your pardon, my Lady,” said Maddie, “but we were here first.”

The green girl’s tongue ran over her teeth. Her grimace slowly turned into a grin.

“Well done, girl,” she said, bowing her head. “Very well, I can delay my payment until your debts are paid in full. I concede to the veracity of your arguments, and the righteousness of your claims to Georgie Collins. He’s all yours.”

She turned, and sloshed out of the room. Behind her, Georgie awoke with a great heaving beath, panting like a man half drowned. Then he sat up in bed, and saw Sigun, Mortessa, Maddie, and Killstreak69 all looking at him with expressions of determination and resolve.

It would be impolite to guess here who he would have chosen to go with given the choice, but judging by the look on his face, a thousand lifetimes at the tender mercies of the Gentry would be a picnic compared to what four wronged undergrads could invent for him.


End file.
